The call that brought a Hillsdale County sheriff's deputy to Oscar Herrera's door in Reading Township, Michigan, on April 28, 2021, was routine: complaints about loose dogs. The deputy knocked.
Herrera's pit bull — his name was never reported — charged. Body-camera footage of the call captured what followed: the deputy tried chemical spray, then fired at least four shots, killing the dog.
Oscar Herrera was 32 years old, and his dog had just been shot dead at his own front door. He became distraught over the dog's death. About five minutes after the dog died, Herrera charged at the deputy while reaching for a knife, and the deputy shot him too.
Oscar Herrera did not survive.
Five minutes separated the two shootings. A knock on a door about loose dogs ended with a dead dog and a dead 32-year-old man, both shot by the same deputy on the same call. An attorney for the Herrera family described that sequence in one sentence: the officer, the attorney said, "manufactured this needless death."
The accounting
The Michigan State Police investigated — an outside agency, at least — and the case went to the Hillsdale County prosecutor. The record does not report any charges coming out of that review.
The deputy, whom the record never names, was placed on paid leave. The leave lasted about four weeks. Then he returned to patrol.
That is the entire disciplinary record: roughly a month of paid time away, followed by a return to the same job in the same county. For a call that ended with two deaths — a dog shot at least four times, and five minutes later, the man distraught over losing him — the sum of professional consequence was four weeks of salary the deputy collected while not working, and a uniform waiting for him at the end of it.
The family's attorney called Herrera's death manufactured and needless. Nothing in the public record answers that. The state police investigated; the prosecutor received the file; the leave was served and ended. Whatever those five minutes at Oscar Herrera's door should have cost, the record shows what they did cost the deputy: about four weeks, all of them paid.